I didn't see much wrong with him, could somebody please explain what was exactly wrong with him? The man at the gas station was able to tell it right away without even talking to him, was it something physical perhaps?
shareIt could be implied that John was developmentally challenged due to a difficult pregnancy and birth.
shareJohn just seemed hyperactive to me. He didn't have Down Syndrome which would be noticable.
sharemaybe autistic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpJYeERZx5g
I assumed either autistic or aspbergers. It actually took me a little bit to realise though, in the beginning I just thought his family babied him, but as the movie went on I could tell he definitely acted too young for a 10 year old.
shareThe coroner who originally examined the child made a statement about the skull or something about the remains indicating that the child probably had a developmental delay (I remember Jon Ham saying that his own child didn't) and there were a number of comments made throughout the movie about the boy being "backwoods", "having quirks" and "being retarded". He wasn't autistic - he was way too socially related. John just seemed a little delayed, nothing drastic. He could have had a slight case of microcephaly or possible oxygen deprivation at birth.
shareBackwards, not "backwoods" is what I thought they said.
Yes, not autistic, just "not right" as they used to say. With the mother being said to be "not right" either, it could have been that, too. Maybe she'd been on medication. In the 40/50's and 60's women were on medication when they were pregnant and its effects weren't known or broadcast like they are now. Maybe she drank.
He seemed mildly slow, and young for his age. His parents would know, having 2 older boys to use as reference and comparison.
The head shape might be explained by a forcep delivery.
You could just "tell". I don't know how else to put it. You don't need to classify kids with any sort of specific "disability" or anything. Some kids are just slow. John was one of those kids. Not Downs Syndrom, not some terribly debilitating disability. Sweet kid, nothing in the world bad or terrible about it. I knew a couple of kids over the course of growing up that were like this. We didn't call them out on it or were mean to them or anything...you could just tell they were different. We still included them in the games and stuff we played but we knew there were limits. The thing about this that bugged me about the movie was that John didn't remember Diploma from their first meeting outside the barbershop. Essentially, he's around ten years old, has the mentality of a four or five year old (evidenced by his "I have to pee, papa" line all the time) but he didn't recognize the guy who offered to by him a kick-@ss toy (the shiny red airplane)??? C'mon...he would've hassled his dad about that right away..."papa, that's the man who's gonna buy me the plane!" Also, it's supposed to be inferred that his dad was a pilot in WWII, right? Remember, the older brother dies during/shortly after Vietnam...the older brother was a pilot? "Followed in his father's footsteps" or whatever the waitress/future wife said? Anyway, good movie but one of my sticking points is why John didn't recognize Diploma at the construction site after he had met him. Let me know if anyone else thought the same.
shareThat is an interesting point; that "John didn't remember Diploma from their first meeting outside the barbershop."
However, I don't think he actually looked at him, just talked. I remember the scene as; John was in the car looking out the window at the airplane in the shop when Diploma approached, While Diploma was talking to him, John just started off, as if mesmerized. So, if he didn't actually look at him, he wouldn't have recognized him later at the work site.
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Easy there, tiger. They're just asking a question.
The reference to the boy being fascinated with a silver coin & another object plus his fascination with the toy car, when he wasn't aware his Dad was talking to him, are typical of autism, but were presented way too subtly.
I thought it was going to be a great movie when it started out, but they could have done a much better job with their visual clues. For example, it would have been much more interesting & suspenseful if the killer's identity wasn't revealed to the viewer until the police detective saw the photo fifty years after the murder.
Also they threw the viewer off totally with close ups of the killer's tattoo photos since the only person who had a tattoo you could see in the 1958 part of the movie was the boy's father.
I backed up that section of the movie on my DVR repeatedly, comparing the two tattoos to be sure if I actually saw only the father with a tattoo and comparing the actual tattoos. If that was supposed to be some kind of red herring, this film's director should go back to film school.
He is what we used to refer to as a "slow child". The movie didn't explain the condition but it was necessary as a plot device.
shareExactly! Okay, here's the thing.... I know you don't have to be blatantly obvious if you have some sort of mental issue. But c'mon every ten seconds the film tried to remind you of it. Everyone kept saying "That boys got quirks, can't deal with em" lol, it was meant to be a main focal point of the story but I think they were too afraid to ask the kid to act mentally slow. I don't know. Just another hole in a movie with pretty good actors but failed direction.
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